> and I've heard stumpwm is great, for all you lisp lovers :)

IIRC, the creator of ratpoison is also the creator of stumpwm (though I could be mis-informed).

  > gnus for mailer: probably. I've heard it's even better than
  > mutt, but I don't use email often enough to warrant the
  > switch yet.

A couple of years back I tried to get Gnus working, but I ran into: (i) confusing documentation, (ii) not much help through blogs/Google, and (iii) Gnus users on IRC telling me "not to bother" trying to learn Gnus because there were better solutions out there. I've also heard complaints on a number of occasions that Gnus is a dog when trying to load up large mailboxes (and that mutt is better at this).